than there might have been. Perhaps people snarled and flustered around more chaotically than usual. There are shouts and bumps as a ship is laden with cargo. The crew do take delight in not bothering to inform passengers what is going on. Casting off seems their excuse to make shipboard visitors panic.
So for once, what happened was not my fault. I was down in the bowels of the vessel anyway. Then I heard the scream.
As I climbed up the rope ladder to the main deck, something worried me. Thudding and rocking had given way to smoother sensations. I felt the change in air movement, then a surge underfoot knocked me almost off balance.
'We're moving already!' Aelianus cried excitedly. Foreboding struck me. A panicky commotion was already telling me the worst: the captain had cast off and sailed out of Portus. Unluckily he did so while Maia was still on- board with us.
My sister was now straining at the rail, ready to throw herself over like a Naiad crazed by too much sun and foam. I had never seen Maia so hysterical. She was shrieking that she had been taken from her children. Only real force from Justinus, who had grasped the situation in his usual quick style and then grabbed Maia, stopped her trying to hurl herself overboard to get back to shore. Like me, she had never learned to swim.
'There's my brother taking a firm hand with the women,' sneered Aelianus.
'My sister knows close-contact wrestling though,' I commented as Maia flung her saviour aside and collapsed weeping on her knees.
As Maia sobbed, something about the quiet way Helena was exclaiming over her in sympathy made me pause. I would have expected my beloved to turn to me and order me to solve this problem before it was too late.
I leaned on the rail and stared back at the quay side There indeed were Maia's four young children. Marius, Cloelia and Ancus stood in a solemn line together; they seemed to be calmly waving us goodbye. Rhea was held up in the arms of Petronius Longus as if to get a better view of her mother being abducted. An extra small dot must be Marius' puppy sitting quietly on his lead. Petronius, who could have tried commandeering a boat to chase after us, was just standing there.
'My children! Take me back to my children! My darlings; whatever will become of them without me? They will all be terrified '
The neatly lined-up little figures were all looking quite unperturbed.
Aelianus decided to play the hero; he obligingly rushed to negotiate with the captain. I knew the man would not turn back. Justinus caught my eye and we both stayed where we were, with suitable expressions of concern. I reckon he saw what I was thinking. Perhaps he had even been in on the plot: this was fixed. One reason the captain would not be turning back was that somebody had paid him to cast off quietly and then to keep going.
My sister was being removed from the reach of Anacrites. Somebody had set this up, whether Maia liked it or not. My guess was Helena. Petronius and even Maia's children might have conspired too. Only Helena could have invented the scheme and paid for it. Maia was unlikely to see the real truth. Once she had calmed down and started to work this out then I, her utterly blameless brother, would end up being blamed.
'Well, let's consider what we can do,' I heard Helena say. 'The children are with Lucius Petronius. No harm will come to them. We shall somehow get you home again. Don't cry, Maia. One of my handsome brothers will be going home from Massilia. You can easily be taken back with him…'
Both of her handsome brothers nodded in support then since neither really intended to turn back at Massilia, they both skulked off out of the way.
Nobody seemed to need me. I got my head down in my work. I tied a long string to my daughter Julia so she could clamber about the deck in safety (and trip up sailors). Nux, a first-time sailor, whined a lot then lay on my legs. I rolled up the new baby in a warm papoose and kept her under my cloak against my chest. Then I sat on the deck with my feet up on an anchor, studying my notes from the Palatine secretariat which administered funds for the Great King's palace.
As usual with otBcial projects, where the client had the highest expectations and the producing agency had the greatest need to shine, the larger were the errors and the higher the costs. Treasury audit had been applied and had nothing good to say. Loss of materials on site had reached epic proportions. There had also been a rash of serious accidents. Even the scheme's architect had submitted a scared report about his fears of sabotage.
Frontinus, the provincial governor, reckoned the programme completion date had not just slipped, it had skidded right into the next decade. He was having difficulties curbing the client's demands and possessed no decent manpower to send in on a rescue mission, due to conflicting needs of the major new works being built in Londinium (that was principally the new headquarters for the provincial governor himself). Brutal paragraphs in administrative Greek spelled out the worst. The Great King's palace had reached the danger stage: it was all set to be the biggest administrative failure ever.
IX
luck is a wonderful luxury. What could better prove that some are born under a star of good fortune than the career (and the large, comfortable home) of the Great King?
'Cogidumnus. 'Justinus cautiously tried it out.
'Togidubnus,' I corrected him. This was a provincial of such ripe insignificance that most Roman commentators never even called him by the correct name. 'Learn it, please, lest we offend. The Emperor may be our principal client, but Togi is the end customer. Pleasing Togi is the whole point of us suffering this trip. Vespasian wants his house to go up nicely so that Togi stays happy.'
'You had better stop calling him Togi,' warned Helena, 'or you are bound to slip up and insult him in public.'
'Insulting officials is my style.'
'But you want your assistants to be smoothly oiled diplomats.'
'Ah yes. I have the rough edges you are a pair of sickly smarm pots!' I threw at them.
We had been stuck at some mansio in the drabber parts of Gaul when we found time for our tutorial. Hyspale had been instructed to stop moaning about her discomfort (she had the art of making herself unhappy) and to take care of the children. So Helena was able to shine as my background researcher. Luckily her brothers (yes, both) were used to being lectured by their big sister. I myself would never quite
relax when she started explaining things. Helena Justina could always m
surprise me by the scope of her sources and the detail they provided.
We had fetched up here after days of weary travel. The children seemed to be coping better than the rest of us, though Helena and I
had the irritation of disapproval from foreigners. While Gauls were amazed how strict we were with our daughters, we thought them slapdash spoilers of their own uncontrollable brats. Some of theirs had fleas. Ours, swept off into kitchens to be cooed over for their pretty curls, would acquire them soon. Nux was attacking her Roman ones vigorously. I had had itches since Lugdunum, though if the creatures were being carried on my person I had failed to find them. That was because I had rarely had my clothes off to search. Mansios had baths, but if you tarried in the queue to wash, you missed them serving dinner. Afterwards, the water was cold. With ruts in roads and gruesome weather, it added to the fun.
We all sat around a large table in the dingy hall that passed for a communal dining room at the mansio, with my sister hunched slightly to one side. Maia had been sufficiently alarmed by what she saw of the ship's crew who hauled us north past Italy; she refused to go back to Ostia alone. She had never travelled more than twenty miles from Rome before. When we made Gaul, she had no real idea how many dreary miles remained. She still thought she would be going home in a few weeks. We would be lucky even to reach Britain in that time.
Helena had 'found' a letter 'hidden' in her luggage from Marius, explaining that it was the children who had decided to send their mother away to safety. Maia believed Petronius Longus must have helped them, and that it was a ploy to steal her children now his own were with Silvia. Maia sat around the whole journey, planning to poison him with toad's blood. We stopped trying to include her in conversations.
'Our uncle Gaius has sent me some information about the area and the project,' said Helena briskly. 'You two boys have never met him. You have to pretend this is being expounded by a neat, enthusiastic, lifelong
